NASA Contest Offers 'Presents from Space'

Below:

Next story in Science

For its 40th birthday, one of the United States' oldest ongoing
satellite missions is celebrating by handing out some unique
presents.

The Landsat Project, a joint venture between NASA and the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS), has been monitoring changes in the
Earth's surface since July 1972, when its first Earth-observing
satellite was blasted into space.

At the time,
weather satellites had proved an invaluable addition to the
arsenal of tools researchers used to track changes swirling above
the planet, but it wasn't clear the orbiting observers could send
back equally valuable data on what was happening to the planet
itself.

In the four decades since, the Landsat Program has created the
longest continuous space-based record of changes in the Earth's
surface.

Over the years, the satellites have monitored changes from
city sprawl to the reach of forests to the
creeping effects of natural disasters, providing invaluable
information to a wide range of groups, from farmers to climate
researchers to emergency managers.

Now, to celebrate the milestone, several United States citizens
will receive a customized, 40-year-long visual record of a place
of their choosing — if they are one of the lucky winners of the
NASA-USGS My American Landscape contest.

To enter, the federal agencies are asking people to submit the
answers to a few simple questions regarding changes to landscapes
in their area. Entrants who give the most compelling answers will
receive a unique space-based chronicle of their chosen area.